Always running out of time.

[Fleshbits]

It really feels that instead of strategy, a successful run is left to randomness. Did you pull the henchmen or boss early or late, basically. The player has no control over the countdown to running out of time, except for A) party size or B) One use, banish, candle. Succeeding in defeats certainly helps, and I succeed at them all, so cards aren't pulled from locations twice.

 

I run with a part size of 4. Sometimes I do 3. Neither succeed in time for about 50% of the runs.

 

Am I missing something?

[Hannibal_PJV]

How much you use allies and blessing to explore multible times in one round? (aka discard them)

Do you use Augury spells and similar to find hensmans and villain earlier, or to put unwanted cards to the bottom of the deck.

[Fleshbits]

How much you use allies and blessing to explore multible times in one round? (aka discard them)

Do you use Augury spells and similar to find hensmans and villain earlier, or to put unwanted cards to the bottom of the deck.

I disgard about 50% of the blessing and allies.  I like to have one in hand in case I get a check I can't pass otherwise.

[Hannibal_PJV]

That Sounds about ok. Using last blessing can be risky. If somebody can help in Emergency, then even that can go.

[Assussanni]

I find that I rarely run out of time, except on 5-4, although I think it gets a bit easier once you've got a few skill feats and some better cards. As mentioned already Augury is a wonderful card, as is the Revalation Quill.

 

Seelah is a great character to use if you find you are running out of time because of her Ceaseless Crusade power, which can effectively eliminate up to two-thirds of a location deck.

 

Also, if you aren't already, spread out your characters as soon as you have closed two locations so that you can defeat the villain as soon as you encounter them.

 

Finally, there are a series of strategy articles by Shannon Appelcline on the Paizo website which you might find useful. They were written with the tabletop game in mind but are mostly applicable to the digital version as well: http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/tags/adventureCardGameStrategy

[Irgy]

Randomness, particularly with regards to finding the villain, has a large impact, but it's still possible to win quite consistently in spite of it.

 

You can spend less time by exploring more aggressively. You say you like to keep 1 blessing on hand, but if you explore with your last blessing you still have your friends to back you up, and then if you've emptied your hand well enough you can draw a new blessing instead. Pack enough cures and the aggressive exploring costs you nothing.

 

But time itself might not be the real problem. Time is basically the only way to lose most scenarios (technically there's character death but that should be extremely rare), so saying you're running out of time doesn't really explain what's going wrong. If you fail checks and especially if you fail to close locations that costs time. But if you're overcautious and spend all your blessings helping and none exploring that costs time. Just generally making good choices, having good cards and making the most of characters' abilities will save you blessings and therefore time. So although finding the villain may look like it's the problem because it's the visible point of failure, improving any part of your play will result in finding the villain more often.

Edited July 12, 2017 by Irgy

[Thyraxus]

My recommendation for getting a feel for the pacing of the game would be to play a party of 4 characters. This means that in a normal scenario there are 6 locations with 60 cards to explore and 30 turns to do it, making it an even 2 explorations per turn you would need to do in order to be able to dig through all of the locations in their entirety. And that's not too hard; you get one exploration for free and spending one blessing or ally per turn to get another one shouldn't be too much of a drain on your resources most of the time. Not all of them need to come from your deck after all, you have the chance to pick up more of them from the location as you go (and some characters have powers that give you extra explorations, or are equivalent to one, but don't cost a discard). And if all else fails, there's always the Cure spells to get them back if you have a divine caster in your group.

 

So, as long as you manage to keep up that pace (one free exploration plus one additional one), you'd still be able to complete the game in the theoretical worst case where all the henchmen and the villain are on the very bottom of their respective locations, and you never manage to close any locations temporarily when encountering the villain. Of course this assumes you win every combat and check, which might also not always be possible and losing might cost you resources and/or turns, but then again, you often will encounter be able to close locations early (there's a 10% chance that the henchman will be your very first encounter of a location, meaning you have chance to close it in one turn, saving nine turns) so it kind of evens out in the end.

 

Also keep in mind that you don't have to close all locations - because in a typical scenario there are 2 more locations than characters, once 2 of them are permanently closed and the remaining ones are all guarded by one character each, any encounter with the villain can mean an early win (as long as you have the means to close all the locations temporarily and defeat the villain).

Edited July 12, 2017 by Thyraxus

[stgandhi]

As a new player, I used to form a 6 character party and found it's nearly impossible to finish a play in time. But when I turn to a 3-4 character party, time is no longer a problem.

Maybe you should use bless & companions more to explore, in my experience, it means alomost all of them. If the check is too hard, you should consider such things:

1、be prepared to deal with monsters, mainly use Valeros、Amiri、Seoni, or Lini、Seelah、Merisiel when they got a weapon & can use their ablities,or even Lem、Ezren,when they got attak spells.

2、sent character to the right place, like Ezren to acadmey or Merisiel to jail, Amiri & Valeros to garrison.Lini & Seelah shines here because ther nearly fit in everywhere.

3、don't bother with the things not so important, let the check fail & let the card be banished, don't waste bless or companions on it.

4、you can also try a two character party, my suggestion is Lem with Valeros. let them go together. This combination can pass almost every check. Dealing with 40 location cards in 30 turns, time is definitely no more problem. Though it needs some other techniques.

[Gamerfergy]

My two cents is that the heroes you choose, the combinations of those heroes, and equipping which cards to which heroes can have a big impact on the game.

 

I definitely have the most success with certain heroes and struggle with others. I'm sure their are correct strategies for each hero; I'd recommend finding out which heroes you like and then explore their strategies. For example, I find the Valeros/Lem combo at the same location very powerful. However, I struggle with the monk and the barbarian. Having healer heroes is HUGE!

 

Of course, after you start leveling, which abilities you choose, and how you combine different heroes abilities can have a big effect too.

 

Bottom line, try a bunch of hero combos till you find some you like best! It is fun when you find some cool strategies that lead to success....

[Lucifer Hex]

Controlling the clock is not as much of an issue until you're running into scenarios that stop you from taking additional explorations on certain conditions (gain an ally or blessing and stop exploring). Having characters that regen their own blessings (Kyra, Seelah) is a tremendous boon to exploration. The other thing I find useful is keeping an Invoke on any of the divine casters (Harsk, Seelah, Lini, Kyra, Lem) so it's buried instead of banished. That said, I find it useful but not always necessary until 5-n. Through 6-n. The spider mission, and the Wisdom required one from the Wendigo mission have been the most challenging for me. I have to make certain I put Lini or Kyra there.

[Ethics Gradient]

Seelah has been brought up a few times in this thread, but it bears repeating that she can do a lot of good if you're often running out of time.

 

Maybe she's not the best monster-smasher or part-time cleric, but drop her in a boon-heavy location and it wouldn't be unreasonable to clear half the cards in a single turn.  The different characters have different their skills, and Seelah's talent happens to be crashing her way through location decks.

 

She isn't just in the fight to beat the villain, she's also crusading against the Blessing Deck itself.

 

[Seelah is far and away the best all-around character thusfar]

[Paizo Blog: Chad's Best Character Ever: Seelah]